Fans of the hellish Diablo franchise have been treated to quite a massive resurgence in the franchise with the relatively-recent announcement of the fourth title in the franchise, Diablo 4. While Diablo 3 remains highly active, news of the upcoming release is still more than welcome.
Blizzard brings these updates in quarterly discussion posts, wherein they write up a massive amount of information and plans to move forward. Their most recent discussion of this sort was released today, and brings a great amount of information to the fan base.
One of the most interesting moments of this update is the discussion of the open world playstyle that the title will be taking on. Previously, Diablo was more split into specific zones and acts that were more isolated from each other.
This style brought pros and cons – the game felt a bit more restrictive with an exact railroad you followed all the way to the end of the campaign. An upside of this was that zones felt generally distinct, helping it feel like a world was being traveled.
Conversely, it also made replaying the game a bit of a grind, which could be extra rough for players that enjoyed making new seasonal characters. With the exact same thing being experienced each time, replaying through the campaign became a massive chore.
With this new open world system in place, Blizzard is hoping to add a great amount of variability. With more side quests and other activities on bear than proceeding through the campaign, they hope to bring more options to the players.
“So, while you can concentrate on the story campaign and work through that, we have a variety of open world systems and pieces of content that you are also discovering along the way,” Barriga states. “If you want to take a break from the main campaign and go exploring, crafting, or PvPing, you are free to do so.”
Another thing discussed is the effect this system had with playtesting. Developers saw team members that focused only on story content finish the questline in half the hours of other testers that focused on side activities.
Of course, players that focus on completing the campaign are still able to return to previous locales and do the side missions that they skipped past. By providing such an array of different playstyles, replayability should be increased compared to previous installments.
“We think the ability to approach the game with a different mix of story and side content tailored to your own appetite will make playing (and re-playing) the campaign more enjoyable than it has been in previous ARPGs.”
